Steam is home to a ton of unusual subgenres of games, with an increasing number of niche titles simulating different professions and (sometimes not-so-legal) occupations – the recent success of Drug Dealer Simulator 2 fits well into this trend.
Drug Dealer Simulator 2
You’re probably familiar with games like Gas Station Simulator and one of the surprise hits of the year, Supermarket Simulator, and of course PlayWay’s broad portfolio of different simulations. What do these games have in common? A modest budget, a first-person camera, usually strong sales, and generally positive reviews on Steam.
Drug Dealer Simulator 2 belongs to the same group. Polish publisher Movie Games recently announced that the game sold over 100,000 copies in the first 10 days after its release. Another indicator of the game’s success is that it generated more revenue in its launch week than any of the company’s other games.
There’s certainly a demand for these types of games. In the latest GameDiscoverCo newsletter, Simon Carless looked at all games released on Steam in the last 12 months that had “Simulator” in the title and found that their average total revenue was around $70,000. The average number of copies sold is between 5,000 and 7,000.
Below are the top 10 highest-grossing games in the “X Simulator” subgenre on Steam as of July 2023.*:
*Note: All data is GameDiscoverCo’s estimate and may differ from official figures, as is the case with Drug Dealer Simulator 2.
- Supermarket Simulator — $22.2 million (2.14 units sold)
- Kebab Chefs! – Restaurant Simulator — $3.5 million (242,800 units sold)
- Thief Simulator 2 — $2.78 million (176,200 units sold)
- Goat Simulator 3 — $2 million (145,800 units sold)
- Gunsmith Simulator — $1.78 million (115,100 units sold)
- Drug Dealer Simulator 2 — $1.75 million (86,900 copies sold)
- Desynced: Autonomous Colony Simulator — $1.75 million (72,500 units sold)
- Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 — $1.63 million (103,600 units sold)
- Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator — $1.51 million (56,200 units sold)
- Pumping Simulator 2 — $1.2 million (76,100 units sold).
Interestingly, half of the games in the top ten were developed or published by Polish companies: PlayWay remains a leader in this niche, having successful projects in genres that don’t have “simulator” in the title (such as the House Flipper series).
At the same time, Turkish developers (Supermarket Simulator, Kebab Chefs!, Pumping Simulator 2) are actively trying to gain a foothold in this niche, including some such as Nokta Games, who developed mobile games before entering the PC market.
And as Carless pointed out, “We actually think that ‘simulators’ are an underdeveloped genre/style of game; if they’re done well, they’re more likely to sell than ‘normal.'” Because these titles don’t usually require big budgets (compared to other genres), we’ll likely see more and more developers follow this trend before the market becomes saturated.
